


Soulmates Aren’t Just Lovers

by goodemornting



Category: Canada’s Drag Race RPF, RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/F, Falling In Love, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Lesbian AU, Light Angst, Love, Marriage, No pining here bitch they go straight IN, Parent Death, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Very light though and it’s not a huge part of the story so, because basically, lemonjuice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:54:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25198843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodemornting/pseuds/goodemornting
Summary: Lemon and Juice met when they were only ten, but even then they knew they were meant to be. Basically, Lemonjuice’s love story told through each year they fell deeper and deeper for each other.
Relationships: Lemon/Juice Boxx
Comments: 10
Kudos: 36





	Soulmates Aren’t Just Lovers

**Author's Note:**

> Hiii everyone! This is most definitely the most emotional fic I’ve ever written so this was kinda weird to write lmao but I hope you enjoy it! Big thanks to Zyan for betaing and bullying me over the kids names, I love youu :> You can always come say hi to me on tumblr, @goodemornting babyyy !!

Juice met Lemon when they were ten. 

She was the new kid in town, with a funny accent, littered with freckles and Lemon took her under her wing. A girl with a large beaming smile and an even larger personality, kindness and laughter wrapped in pouty lips and the colour yellow. Lemon was everyone's friend, but she was Juice’s best friend from the start. From the second Lemon took her hand in the playground, Juice was in too deep. But she liked it. She always liked it.

Even back then, the other kids called Lemon nicknames, not kind ones like she had been stuck with - Juice wasn’t very bad, she supposed. It was better than sour, rotten, some stupid fruit pun that wasn’t funny in the slightest. 4D was the favourite, because Lemon always was more. More than everyone else. More than enough (sometimes, Juice didn’t think she knew that). She’d asked her once, sitting under a tree on the school field, as the shorter girl got mud on her uniform while she pierced daisies with her fingernail and deftly threaded another through, how she beared it. They were supposed to draw each other in art class, and Juice’s partner had drawn a whale for her as a cruel joke. The blonde studied Lemon’s fingers through blurry eyes, trying to convince herself not to cry before they would have to go for their next class.

"People always call you names and you just laugh. How do you do that?" She’d sniffled, fiddling with the too-long grass and breaking the green stems. 

"I know they're just joking," Lemon mumbled. She’d split the crown in two. "If I laugh along, it hurts me less."

"I like that you do that," Juice whispered, honest. She met the shorter’s eyes briefly, before the other had gone back to work, finishing the two flower rings. Bracelets. 

She searched for her fingers, dragging her arm out and placing the bracelet on Juice’s wrist, hanging off daintily, slightly too big. Lemon wore the other with a proud smirk, happy with her handy work. Matching. A pair. Later, Juice would press it into her scrapbook, clinging onto memories as she had since the second Lemon came into her life.

Her scrapbook, filled to the brim, packed with pictures of a little Julia, a baby, stumbling in the grass or on her first day at school, hanging off the swings upside down. There were many a time before Lemon in Juice’s memories; birthday candles and sandboxes and keeping her head down and grades up at school. But those memories weren’t important. The time before Lemon wasn’t important, in her humble opinion. And even though she was still young, ten years old and seeing the world through wide eyes and rosecouloured glasses, she knew there would never be an 'after'. 

Lemon had kissed her on the cheek that day, all soft touches and giggles. It had surprised her, but it was harmless, childish affection not meant to be taken seriously. It was the same as her mother had done, ‘magic kisses,’ meant to heal grazed knees or sore thumbs.

"I think your cheeks are pretty," Lemon had said.

And Juice had grinned, "Thank you."

And Lemon had snickered, “I'll think they're pretty whether they're chubby or not."

And Juice had grinned even wider, "Why?"

And Lemon had finished, “Because you're pretty and you'll always be pretty. Because you're Juice.”

She still believes that, to this day.

**Eleven:**

Eleven wasn't a good age; it was that time when their classmates decided to start getting crushes on celebrities and each other, and when Lemon kissing her cheek crossed a line from skinship to something gross. Juice hated that. At least holding hands wasn’t off-limits. But, although Lemon had many friends, and Juice had her fair share as well, none of those spent nights sleeping over (rather, staying up all late watching their favourite movies), none of them could call Miss Zest as affectionately.

But, school wasn't everything. Just that little bit older, just a year, opened a whole new world for them to explore together. They could finally spend their allowance somewhere other than on the grocery store trips with parents. Arcade prizes and movie tickets Juice still had hidden inside her scrapbook, Nintendo and instant noodles and lipgloss. It was the land of daydreams, every summer feeling hazy like a fever dream. Sometimes she still thought about it, longing for those summers when there was only fun and them and nothing else to worry about. She longed for when they were smaller and knew less; when their brave new world was just a few streets and their own imaginations. Lemon would take her out for ice cream and games of hide and seek. Juice bought her a Nintendo Switch. They played it, lying on Juice’s bed together the night before a big exam.

They loved each other.

**Thirteen:**

Lemon was soaring and Juice felt like she was being left behind. 

Maybe it was preteen angst, maybe it wasn’t, she didn't know at the time and didn’t really know now. She was just dissatisfied. Juice was friendly, but Lemon was more diserable. They had new classmates, the classes mingled, and they liked her more. And she liked them (if Juice had looked closely, she'd have seen it wasn't even a fraction of what Lemon felt for her, but she hadn't). A lonely feeling ate her up. She studied more than she played with the blonde in their new world they'd found, sitting at her desk in her room rather than on the shorter girl’s bed.

She needed to be better. Her grades needed to be better, she needed to look cooler, her braces had to go, her chubby cheeks needed to go along with them. Needed, needed, needed. What she needed was Lemon. What she needed were friendship and love. But she shunned it and locked herself away.

So Juice got clear alligners and a new haircut, she worked out and lost weight, lost the chubby cheeks Lemon loved and watched herself drift away. Juice, more than anything, wanted it back. She daydreamed about that time instead of taking notes and her father scolding her at home. The arcade called to her, but she couldn't bring himself to go in, wasting time, without the younger girl.

Juice was drawing under the tree — fruits, all different types covering her sketchbook paper — the one that used to be their spot and would be again, she hoped. She looked up startled at the sound of grass rustling in front of her, gazing wide eyed at a hesitant Lemon trembling in front of her.

"Are you okay?" The shorter girl asked earnestly, hand on the sketchbook, lowering it. Juice was forced to look at her; it was better than she’d thought. Her eyes were warm and sad, lonelier than she’d expected. She missed her.

“Why’d you ask?”

"Because you don't smile anymore," Lemon said, so simply and so deeply. Her voice reverberated in Juice’s heart and mind. "Because I miss you. I miss your cheeks and your glasses. I'd like you like this if you smiled."

She had smiled at that; not all the way, not the crescent moon eyes the younger girl missed so much, not the teeth peeking through kind of grin. An acknowledgement. An attempt. A promise. 

After school, they went to the arcade and ate crepes. Juice ordered. It was still the same. Extra strawberries and chocolate sauce for her, lemon and sugar — of course — for Lemon. She took a strawberry from her own crepe and popped it into Lemon’s mouth, smiling wider than she had in weeks.

It was so easy to be exactly the same as before. But they talked about it, the gaps. Juice admitted she felt like Lemon didn't need her as much as she needed her. Lemon was mad. She took her hands, too wise for a twelve-year-old, and looked at her with steely eyes.

"You think too lowly of yourself, Julia Boxx. You are everything to me. I love you."

"I love you too." But for once, it was Juice that meant it more.

**Fourteen:**

They spent the year as if they were never apart. Lemon taught her bits of all the languages she'd been learning (seven) and helped Juice with her maths homework. Juice baked her cupcakes and made gelato from her mom’s old recipe books. She’d learnt from her grandma and she' still wasn’t good — as in, she could hardly make cereal without starting a small scale house fire — but she was trying, and that was what mattered.

It was summer and they laid together on Lemon’s bed in the sweltering heat. Juice’s palms were clammy with the warmth and proximity but the younger girl held tight anyway. She turned on her side, meeting Lemon’s gaze. There was something between them, a tension. Neither said anything, it was in the air between them, in their eyes and the quirks of their lips.

Juice closed her eyes for a moment, overwhelmed. She knew Lemon like the back of her hand; could picture her in every detail, from mole to intonation of her voice. She blinked them back open, saw the shorter girl staring and blinking at her too, languidly. Lemon leaned forward, unconsciously wetting her lips. It was her that closed the gap.

It wasn’t perfect. Everyone always says their first kiss is perfect. That’s a lie.

It wasn’t much more than a peck, really. But it was nice and it was comforting and it was them. It was Lemon. Her lips were soft and tasted like cola chapstick. And it was more than Juice could’ve dreamt of.

They didn’t talk about it, not really. They didn’t say "do you want to date? do you want to be my girlfriend?". It was unspoken, like most things between them. They didn’t need to say it, because they already knew.

The arcade was a little more special now, the movie theatre too. They held hands and kissed in the dark seats when the credits were rolling and everyone had left. Stolen secrecies. Moments. It was a breath away from school and the harsh glares, the overanalyzing. 

Lemon took her to a cat cafe once and they tried coffee for the first time. The shorter girl hated it, but Juice didn’t really mind it. Her drink was really sweet anyway. She watched Lemon play with the cats and took pictures of her on the Polaroid camera she got for her last birthday. The film got eaten up like that, printed all over with Lemon. It wasn’t a waste, she doesn’t think. It could never be. She kept every single one.

The yellow haired girl got a part-time job at that cafe later, Juice swimming in her employee discounts and the odd cookie for free that was too garbled for display. She forgot the name of the cafe quickly after so many years of calling it Lem’s work or Lemon’s Job. But that was how memories fade, the details gone and the joy remaining, tinting those blurred edges with rose gold. 

**Fifteen:**

They told their parents. 

Juice decided to do it in the kitchen one morning, on a whim. She was eating leftover pizza hunched over the kitchen table, her mom cleaning the dishes. 

“Lem and I are dating," she remarked, casually, as if it was weather, voice trembly and soft. She knew her mother wouldn’t mind these things. She loved her so thoroughly and inside out. A bit like Lemon. She would never judge.

She smiled at her, eyes tired, face tired (she was sick, then, she hadn't told her yet) but still happy. "I know, dear. How couldn't you be?"

Juice furrowed eyebrows, confused, and asked her what she meant. She still remembered the words.

"You're a matching pair. It's like destiny, if you believe in such things. I do, looking at you two."

Juice supposed it was. It had also been the two of them. Always two; a pair, a couple, a match. It was Juice and Lemon. Lemon and Juice. Lemonade. Even their names matched perfect. Never just one or the other, even when they were apart. 

It stuck out a bit. Their classmates kept asking if they were really just best friends and they didn't know how to answer. Lemon was Juice’s best friend. And her love, and her soulmate, and her princess and more. Hers. Like she was Lemon’s. Everything, everything to each other. There was never just one label they could put on it, something between them that transcended what they knew and what they could express. It was always that way. Always would be.

**Sixteen:**

Juice’s mom was really sick. She was always at home now, with her, looking after her, like she did for her when she was tiny. 

She thought it was unfair. Why couldn't her mother be well so she could go out having fun with her friends and working and doing what she wanted to do? Why couldn't she be living out her teenage years to the fullest? But even then, she knew, somewhere beneath the stress and tears and anger, that life was just like that, not sunshine and days at the arcade like she’d thought for so long, and it wasn’t about to change for her.

Lemon often came over. Juice didn't go out much with her at that time, too anxious to leave her mum on her own, just in case. The yellow haired girl — freshly dyed, courtesy of her bathroom at an impulse sleepover — always brought flowers for her, put them in water in the kitchen and brought them up to her room, or else left them on the sideboard there, for later. 

They played Pokémon together on their DS' sitting on Juice’s bedroom floor, or painted, filling the gaps in her scrapbooks with crude flowers and doodles and cubism, or studied in comfortable silence together. 

Sometimes, the blonde would cry and Lemon would hold her, silently. She’d rock her back and forth, run her fingers through her hair and kiss her forehead, again and again. She still did that. Lemon had never been one for meaningless platitudes or promises she couldn’t keep. She didn't say "it's okay, it'll all be okay." Because it wasn't, and they didn't know what the future held. Lemon never lied to her.

Sometimes her mother was well enough and the weather was good enough to sit in the garden with Lemon and Juice. They dug up weeds to entertain her and planted new white carnations. Lemon wanted sunflowers, so Juice planted them. There were daisies on the lawn, from the lack of care and Lemon had knotted them into bracelets, like when they were ten. Juice made a crown for her mother. 

She took a lot of pictures. Of her mom, of Lemon, and the shorter girl would steal her camera to take pictures of her, or her and her mother together. Memories to keep, if nothing else.

Juice kept the pictures anyway, in the same scrapbook, piled with all her others, in a box in the wardrobe. She flicked through them, every now and again, fingers gently caressing the photos, the bad paintings and doodles, holding every page as if it were a treasure, and it was.

It wasn’t all melancholy and small happinesses. Lemon saved her money up and bought them tickets to an amusement park during vacation. Screaming on the roller coasters, hands in the air, clasped together. She kept everything from that day, even the receipts for the churros she bought. They both still had the soft toys they bought from the gift shop for each other like they still had the mini tamagotchi’s from the gacha machine there. 

**Seventeen:**

She and Lemon argued for the first time. They did that a lot, puberty on their shoulders and pimples on their faces. Lemon started to outgrow her then and it caused a lot of bickering. Still did.

“We’ll eat dumplings after we finish the physics homework,” Juice had huffed, “Like a reward system, you know?”

The yellow haired girl had rolled her eyes, lips pouted excessively. Normally, it made Juice’s heart melt but she just wanted to get the Physics done and eat. “But I’m hungry,” she whined, trying to make her eyes as wide as possible. Like a begging puppy. 

“Finish your homework faster then,” Juice grumbled, chewing her pencil and trying to remember the formula for kinetic potential energy, letting out a small sigh of victory when it came back to her.

“I’m done.”

“Great.”

“Juicy, I can help you finish it.”

“I’m fine, I don’t need help,” she’d sighed, which was true. “I’m just not a fucking genius like you.”

“Let’s just go eat dumplings.”

“Not now, okay? I only have one question left, so wait.”

“God, you can do that question after—”

“Not everything has to be an argument, you know!”

“Yes, but I can tell you that you’re wrong in seven different languages, which gives me the advantage!”

Juice slammed her hand into the desk, snapping her textbook shut and gathering it and the papers into her hands, clutching them to her chest. They were in Lemon’s room, both sitting at her long desk table. She’d left without another word.

It wasn’t awkward. They fell back into each other the next day, both apologising for being stupid, for being so easily annoyed. It was as easy to forgive as it was to argue at that time, nothing more than petty squabbles (It never really got much worse than petty squabbles, but that was because they tried so hard to learn. To understand each other on a deeper level than the one already incomprehensible to those around them).

They went for dumplings after school.

**Eighteen:**

They were growing restless, Lemon especially. She wanted to go out and explore the world and explore life. In her head, she daydreamed about all the decorations in the apartment they’d inevitably share. A trip to Australia, wine vineyards in Italy and ski slopes in Japan. Juice knew this because she told her, in those quiet moments when light poured in, misty, through curtains or on the bus after school. “Imagine, Juicy,” she would say, practically vibrating with ideas, “Imagine!”

And Juice did. She pictured it, their little home. A modest apartment, bedroom filled with their various posters and game memorabilia, anime figurines too, of course. Modern, pretty. She imagined university and beyond; growing old with Lemon and adopting a dog and a cat. Maybe a child or three, if they ever got such luxuries. She dreamt and wondered if she could make those dreams come true. What were her dreams? Apart from the mundane and the… Lemon-shaped presence in his life, what did Juice want? She didn’t know. She thought that was okay. 

Lemon didn’t know much either, but she had every option open to her. She was good at everything; from music, dance, singing, academia, languages, science, art. She could do anything she dreamt of.

“You could too, Juicy,” she reminded her, clutching her hands promisingly. “Maybe I’m really good at all this, but you are too, and you’ll be even better when you put your mind to it.”

Juice thought and thought and thought. She did a lot of that. Maybe too much. She didn’t need to know yet, not for a few more years, but she wanted to at least think about it.

“Let’s save money.” she sighed, biting her lip, “We should. To go to all those places and stuff.”

Maybe they were thinking ahead too far, but reality had grown boring. They were good enough at the games at the arcade, and there wasn’t many movies they wanted to see. School wasn’t ever exciting. Home became less of an escape and more of the same routine.

What do bored teenagers do?

There were only so many high school parties you could go to before they blend into the same; only so many pizza toppings and only so many cool clothes to buy.

It was a year spent thriving on love and daydreams, pushing through the dreary everyday haze to come out that other, better end.

And then her mom got sick again.

**Nineteen:**

Juice’s mother passed away mid-December. She was shell-shocked. There was nothing left, for a little while, no thoughts passing through her mind. She should’ve been prepared for it, but nothing could do that. Nothing could prepare you for such loss. There was a hole in her chest, one not even Lemon could fill up. One exacerbated by flipping through the pages of her scrapbooks and seeing her, in everything. 

‘Mom bought me that hat.’ 

‘Mom helped me colour this drawing.’ 

She kept a framed picture of her, two, in a little infinity shaped frame Lemon chose. One of her holding her when she was a baby, newborn and snug in her mother’s arms. Another, in the garden, the spring the first time, her and Lemon and her in daisy chain jewellery. She cried sometimes, even years after, especially if she glanced at the picture frame for more than she could bear. She started wearing more makeup because she some of her mom in herself when she did that, searching aimlessly for glimpses of the ghost.

For all the crying she’d done when her mother was ill, when she’d realised she was going to die, she couldn’t bring herself to cry when she finally did. It was a cold, crisp morning. There was frost on the lawn. Juice couldn’t feel anything. Even when she called Lemon to tell her the news and she came running, wrapping Juice up, safe, in her arms. Even when the shorter woman cried herself. 

They gave her a week off of school as if that was enough.

Maybe she was wrong when she said Lemon had deeper love than anyone she’d ever known; she hadn’t considered herself. Juice always cared deeper and quicker, loved harder and more loyally than most. Maybe that was why.

“I thought I’d lost you for a bit” Lemon told her later. “You barely spoke, you barely ate, for months you were a ghost, a shell of yourself and I didn’t know how to bring you back.”

In the end, she brought herself back, slowly. Lemon was there, always there. So accommodating and never pushy, never lying. She told Juice it would get easier, and it did. When she cried for the first time about it, the yellow haired woman was there to hold her, to wipe her face with a warm cloth and tuck her into bed, exhausted. She sobbed so hard she thought she would throw up, so hard she thought it would never stop, but it did.

And the sorrow, like all things, passed. But the grief always lingered.

Juice thought it was the first time she truly realised, in her core, in her soul, what ‘forever’ meant. She learnt that forever is pain, that some things left and there was no coming back. But, she learnt too, that some things would always stay with you. Her mother would always be there, really, in her memories, in her heart. Lemon would be there forever, too. She knew it. It had always been them against the world and it would always be them, eternally, like the universe. 

“Stay,” she whispered to her girlfriend, in the darkness of the night, curled into bed together, unsure where one ends and the other begins. Her pyjamas were soft against Juice’s cheek.

“Of course,”

“No, I mean it,” she lifted her head from Lemon’s chest and held out her pinky finger. “Promise me, stay by my side for eternity.”

The younger woman grinned, linking their pinky fingers together. “Okay, I promise.”

**Twenty:**

Juice decided she wanted to be a doctor.

She was good at science, she enjoyed it and it was something close to her heart. Maybe too close. If she worked hard, she could do this. If she worked hard, she could make the world just a little bit better. Juice was under no delusion that she could save people, but if she could reduce their pain, even the tiniest bit, even just for a moment, she would. Temporary freedoms and a peaceful ending, if it came to that.

“What kind?” Lemon asked. She was slotting coins into the vending machine outside school, getting two cold ice-teas for them.

Juice swung her legs from where she was sitting on a wall. “Oncology,” she paused, Lemon did too. “Everyone always wants to work with the children, so I think I’ll work with the adults,” she mused aloud.

Lemon stood up, holding two cans of drink in her hands. She offered one to Juice and cracked open her own. “I’ll come along and make friends with the old ladies,” 

Juice giggled and Lemon mirrored it with her own. “You can talk about crochet,”

They looked at universities. It was a bit early to be considering them, but they wanted to make sure they had their options sorted, so they could go together. Juice couldn’t imagine being without Lemon. They’d been at each other’s side for the best part of eight years. Being apart then would be like losing a limb. They wouldn’t let that happen.

“What do you want to study?” The blonde asked, taking a sip of her tea as they begun the walk home, wandering and peeking into shop windows. Lemon shrugged at her, mouth forming into a wry smile.

“I really don’t know,” she said nonchalantly, “I kinda wish I could randomise or do, like, a lottery?”

Juice threw her head back with a laugh, “I think you’ll be good at anything you choose.”

“We still have a while to decide yet.”

The sun was setting as they walked. The light bathed everything in a syrupy golden glow; the kind that made dirty streets beautiful and the soul feel at peace. Lemon kissed her in the doorway of a closed shop.

“Let’s go to the river,” she whispered against the younger woman’s lips.

They found the river a few months ago. That evening, it sparkled with orange light and rippled peacefully. The running water was a backing track to Juice’s heartbeat. They took off their shoes and socks, running across the Sandy bank to dip their feet into the freezing cold water. The two of them sat, dripping wet, in the river. It was exhilarating and they laughed so much it made them light-headed. Lemon’s vibrant hair glistened with water droplets.

It was the kind of moment that gets framed in your memory, bathed in that same golden sunlight. It was the kind of moment that makes you forget anything else exists, except her and her girlfriend and the cold water.

**Twenty-One:**

Juice fell in love with the mundane as much as she thought she would when she daydreamed. She fell in love with their little apartment, the modern decor and the organised clutter. If it was possible, she fell in love with Lemon more every morning when she clumsily waddled into their little kitchen to boil herself a cup of lemon tea, rubbing her eyes sleepily. Or maybe, it was on the balcony, looking at the colourful pots that hosted their tomatoes, strawberries, carnations, daisies and the little herb garden; watching the sunrise above the Toronto skyline, spilling light across her face.

The truth was, Juice fell in love with Lemon more every second and with every good night kiss. Every time she thought they were so deeply in love that just when she thoughts there no more height to fall, she found herself plummeting. And she let it happen. It was easy. It was like breathing.

She watched the shorter woman potter around in her pyjamas, scraping together breakfast as Juice loaded the washing. It was domestic. It was everything she never thought she'd have. Wind fluttered the curtains on the balcony doors and Lemon hummed along to the radio as she spread toast with butter. 

It was just another day like the others. But Juice couldn’t tire of it. 

Later, the yellow haired woman would kiss her and she will kiss her back. Later, they'd have to study, do an essay, or two. For now, Juice hugged Lemon from behind as she finished their toast and swayed them side to side softly, listening to the song on the radio.

**Twenty-Three:**

Lemon graduated from her dance course with honours, of course. She was a top student. For once, maybe being a chronic perfectionist worked in her favour. That’s how Juice teased her, nursing coffee the morning after her graduation.

“I’m not a perfectionist ,” she pouted, but she knew Juice didn’t mean it. “I’m your perfectionist,”

“Yes, only for me,” The blonde agreed, downing the last of her coffee. She’d gotten used to it without excessive sugar — med school did that to you. “If someone else calls you that, direct them to me.”

“What are you gonna do, doc?” Lemon laughed, hands reaching out to poke her ribs. She hit them away playfully. “Heal them to death?”

Juice yawned. She reached out for the younger woman’s face, gripping her chin in a show of fake threat. “I have syringes,”

“Poison!” She gasped, all too dramatically. “What a villain!” 

The blonde pulled her closer from where she grasped her chin and kissed her, smiling against it. “Worse,” she whispered. “Vaccines.” 

Lemon snickered, “But seriously,” she replied, straight-faced except for a vague smile. “We’ll vaccinate our kids. We’re not idiots.”

Juice hummed in agreement. They weren’t idiots. She froze suddenly. “Wait, we’re having kids?!”

**Twenty-Five:**

They got married young. It had always been coming. It changed nothing. Marriage wasn’t really anything more than a ceremony, a celebration for them. They’d been married all this time, really. Juice felt like all the guests expected something more from them, some powerful declaration from the vows as if anything was more powerful than the quiet love between them.

“I didn’t write any vows,” The blonde begun, a soft affectionate smile on her face. Lemon looked radiant in dress, impeccable white and sparkly in the afternoon sunlight. Of course, it didn’t shine as bright as her smile, that had been practically plastered across her face all day. That was Lemon after all. “I don’t need to. There’s nothing I could say to you that I haven’t already said, nothing I could tell you that you don’t already know. From the moment you walked into my life, you were my forever. I adore you,” She grinned, as much emphasis on the words as she could pour into them. She’s already said them in all the languages between them, their eyes, their smiles, their hearts sung it out twenty-four seven.

“I didn’t write any either,” Lemon admitted. “I promised you, so many years ago, to be by your side eternally and I will never break that promise. You know that. I love you, Julia Boxx. Thank you for being in my life.”

“No, thank you.” The older woman giggled, “Thank you.”

They pressed their foreheads together gently, yellow hair against strawberry blonde. They shared a glance that meant more than anything they could say. It meant something like forever, like love, like soulmates, but more. More, more, more. As it always had been.

Jan, Lemon’s sister, was one of her bridesmaids. She toasted them later, stood and raised her glass, clinking the edges for attention. Her voice was already clouded with tears.

“You guys…” she sighed and shook her head. “I couldn’t say anything that we haven’t thought, that you haven’t thought. When you two met, ten years old, we all knew we would end up here. People look to you and they see what ‘true love’ means. They see the love they dreamed of, incomprehensible and perfect. It radiates from both of you. We look to you and we say what we mean when we dream of ‘soulmates’ of ‘another half’, a ‘matching pair’. I look at you and I see destiny,”

Juice teared up at that, clutching Lemon’s hand tightly under the table. She thought of those words her mother said to her in the kitchen those many years ago. Her mom could see them now, she knew, not that she couldn’t have guessed it. She knew. 

“You’re perfect for each other. Anyone can see that. You are the love we all strive for and more. I know you will be happy, I don’t need to wish that, but please, for god’s sake, share some of that love with the world. I think you’re hogging it all up.”

Juice sniffled and giggles tearily, Lemon squeezing her hand tighter and smiling wide at her sister. She couldn’t believe it had been fifteen years already. They’d come so far, through thick and thin, but nothing had really changed, not in their hearts, not really.

She knew it would be forever.

**Twenty-Seven:**

Juice had graduated med school and been thrust into the drama and long working hours of the hospital. It was exhausting at first, but soon her body got used to it. Still, she’d like to see Lemon more. 

In the evenings, the yellow haired woman will have made dinner. (She was pretty good at cooking now, with years of practice. Give her a recipe and she could probably manage it.) She cooked more than Juice, since her dance studio hours were more flexible. Sometimes she tried to make fancy things, like souffle pancakes or strawberry meringues, ever the sweet tooth.

Weekends were Juice’s free time. Lemon would take herout on dates or else they’d sit and watch Netflix and order takeout, laze around and stargaze at night.

“You’re amazing,” Lemon whispers to her under the stars one night, eyes hazy. 

Juice grinned, “You are too,”

“We’re amazing,” the younger woman emphasises. “A power couple.”

Juice laughed, intertwining her fingers with Lemon’s. “I think we’re a little more than that.”

**Twenty-Nine:**

She came to them in the middle of the night, a surprise of the best kind. 

They'd been signed up, registered to be foster parents for the past two years, but this was their first opportunity. An emergency placement, just seven months old. She was so small and fragile; Juice didn’t doesn't know what to do with her. She clutched her little fingers tightly in the same way she clutched Lemon’s hand.

The agency said her parents were criminals. They've been arrested and probably wouldn't get her back. They said she was a home-birth, that no record of her exists; her parents never even chose a name. It's their job, if they want it.

Lemon opened her mouth and closed it again, speechless. Juice didn’t even know where to begin.

"We'll call her Clementine," the shorter woman whispers, eyes unmoving from the confirmation email. Juice gazed at her, saw teary eyes and a hopeful smile.

"She’ll get bullied for that when she’s older, y’know.” She laughed, all easy, “Yeah, that’s a cute name.”

And she was theirs. 

Later, Limetta joined her, four when she arrived, a bundle of bright orange hair and crying fits. She was shy and unsure why she was there, why her parents weren’t coming back. It was okay, she learned, she had new parents and a little sister to play with and then her brother, Tangerine, came along. He was eleven, older and colder, but they invited him into their hearts and he accepted them into his. A whole family of citrus and wide smiles and Juice was swept away, happy to be sucked into the whirlwind of fruit puns and clumsy mistakes.

They bought a bigger house, with three bedrooms and in the height of the countryside. The kids shared a brightly painted bedroom and a garden to play in with the dogs. 

They baked cookies together — attempted to, Lemon was never really great in the kitchen and neither was Juice if she was honest. They helped the kids with homework, they stored every single one of their drawings and pasta art in boxes in the attic and on fridge magnets. They kissed them goodnight and good morning and watched them grow, fall in love. Watched them move out, into the world, fall in love with life and the mundane. They watched them get married and have children of their own, Juice taking mountains of pictures to stick neatly in her scrapbook. Never once did she stop wondering how it went from meeting a tiny girl named after a fruit to a lifetime of love.

**Ninety-Two:**

The dogs are long gone, they’re too frail to look after them. The kids are grown up. The cat is going to Clementine since she always loved her most. There are carnations and daisies outside, resting in untamed grass and watered peacefully everyday. Two women, and two hands, held tight. And a promise of forever, beyond this life and onto the next.

“See you there.”

And they are eternal, like the universe.


End file.
